and i also received

indifference is the most powerful of emotions. i don’t let men see my rage anymore. they’re taught to siphon vampirically from an early age, and they won’t feast on my energy. and it’s interesting how indifference might initially present itself as the bottom tier of emotional investment — the nondescript person passing by you on the street, someone you don’t, realistically, care about (grandiose signalings of love for humanity aside). and isn’t that freeing? but then they pass you by again the next day, and you notice the crinkle of the skin around their eyes and how soft it looks, and then days later there’s a word, and then time, and then more time, and then you like them, and more time, and maybe you love them. and more time still, and as they show themselves to be human, not yours, maybe you fall out of love a little, but try to pretend you don’t. and then more time, and then they do something irrevocable, and your brain breaks. you are a volcano of vitriol, a geyser of psychic pain. there are missed calls from an unknown caller and unsettling dreams, which give way to passive-aggression, which give way to less and less thought, more time, more time, “healing”, or whatever that means, more time, and then seven years later the fourth stanza of an otherwise insipid song conjures an image of their face and you feel nothing. their plate is empty. their feast is over. and you are finally free. so then indifference is both the beginning and end of the circle of connection, and in the center, untouchable, is you.